AUSTRALIA
ANU students’ data hacked
Top-ranked Australian National University (ANU) yesterday said hackers late last year breached its cyberdefenses to obtain sensitive data, including students’ bank account numbers and passport details going back 19 years. The breach was only discovered two weeks ago and was carried out by “a sophisticated operator,” ANU said, without elaborating. “National community agencies are recruiting directly out of ANU,” International Cyber Policy Centre head Fergus Hanson said. “To have information about particular people who are working in different departments ... that would be very useful.”
INDIA
Nipah virus resurfaces
The deadly brain-damaging Nipah virus has resurfaced in the southern state of Kerala a year after it killed 17 people, state officials said yesterday. A 23-year-old student tested positive for the virus, which is transmitted to humans through direct contact with infected bats, pigs or other people. Kerala Minister of Health K.K. Shailaja told reporters that four other people had Nipah-like symptoms and that another 80 people were being monitored, including some who were in close contact with the student. “There is no need for panic,” he told reporters.
INDIA
Climbers took risk knowingly
Eight climbers believed to be dead on a treacherous Himalayan mountain “knowingly risked” their lives by changing their plans without permission, an official said yesterday. Military helicopters searching for the four Britons, two Americans, an Australian and an Indian on Monday spotted five bodies on the Nanda Devi Mountain. The group, led by experienced British climber Martin Moran, had last month been given permission to scale the eastern peak of the mountain, but Moran’s mountaineering company announced on Facebook on May 22 after the group reached a second base camp that they planned to attempt “an unclimbed peak” 6,477m high. “This mountain range is more difficult to scale than Mount Everest. They knowingly risked their lives,” an Uttarakhand State official said.
TURKMENISTAN
Bicycle world record broken
The nation on Monday broke the record for the longest parade of cyclists riding in single file, the Guinness World Records company said, in the latest bizarre record set by the central Asian country. A Guinness adjudicator judged that the single-file parade of 2,019 cyclists riding through the capital, Ashgabat, broke a record previously held by India, the TDH state information agency reported. The parade covered a distance of 3.3km, the report said. Guinness confirmed the new world record in an e-mail. The record was set in honor of World Bicycle Day on Monday.
LEBANON
Lone attacker kills four
A lone gunman killed four members of the security forces in the city of Tripoli overnight before blowing himself up, officials said yesterday. “The shooting spree resulted in the deaths of two members of the Lebanese army and two members of the internal security forces,” a security official said. The gunman, reportedly a militant recently released from prison, sowed panic in the streets late on Monday, as Muslims prepared for the first day of Eid al-Fitr, the feast marking the end of Ramadan. The attacker was eventually cornered in a residential building and killed himself by detonating an explosives vest that he was wearing.
TURKEY
No step back in missile deal
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan yesterday said that it was out of the question for the country to take a step back from its deal with Moscow to buy Russian S-400 anti-aircraft missile defense systems. Speaking to reporters after morning prayers, Erdogan also said that an offer from the US to sell Patriot missiles was not as good as the Russian offer. Last week, a top Pentagon official said the consequences would be “devastating” for the country’s joint F-35 fighter program and its cooperation with NATO if the country went ahead with plans to buy the Russian anti-aircraft weapon system.
UNITED STATES
All-inclusive art spreading
Touchable versions of photographs and paintings are adding a new dimension to inclusiveness as museums nationwide make themselves more accessible to people with disabilities. At the American Alliance of Museums’ expo in New Orleans late last month, two exhibitors showed different approaches: Tactile Studios had flat reproductions with slightly raised, slick outlines and details, while 3DPhotoworks used digital artists to turn scanned paintings and photographs into 3D art, with sensors that touched off descriptions of the figures into which they were set.
FRANCE
Lighter helps identify victim
Police on Monday said that they had identified the body of an Indian national found in a sack by the road side in the country’s north thanks to a cigarette lighter found in the dead man’s pocket. Police said the clue had proved distinctive enough to help lead to the detention in Belgium of another Indian suspected of murder. The cigarette lighter stamped “Kroeg Cafe” led to a breakthrough when Belgian federal police saw a picture of it. Belgian police had been searching for 42-year-old Darshan Singh, a resident of Belgium, since June last year. The cafe on the lighter is near the victim’s home in Ravels, near the Dutch border. Investigators confirmed the victim’s DNA from a toothbrush.
UNITED STATES
Climate suit faces hurdle
A lawsuit by a group of young people who have said that the country’s energy policies are causing climate change and hurting their future faces a major hurdle. Three judges from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday heard arguments from 21 young people and the federal government in Portland, but were not expected to rule right away. “It is the constitutional duty of the government to protect public trust resources on which we all depend and to protect us from any damages that it may inflict upon its citizens,” said Aji Piper, one of the plaintiffs. “We are asking the courts to recognize our rights and see that the constitution demands that our rights be protected.”
UNITED STATES
Pioneering doctor dies
Patricia Bath, a pioneering ophthalmologist who became the first African-American female doctor to receive a medical patent after she invented a more precise treatment of cataracts, has died. She was 76. Her daughter said Bath died from complications of cancer on May 30 at a hospital in San Francisco. Bath was in the ophthalmology department at the University of California, Los Angeles, in the early 1980s, when she invented the Laserphaco Probe. The device offered less painful cataract treatment and restored the sight of patients who had been blind for decades.
School bullies in Singapore are to face caning under new guidelines, but the education minister on Tuesday said it would be meted out only as a last resort with strict safeguards. Human rights groups regularly criticize Singapore for the use of corporal punishment, which remains part of the school and criminal justice systems, but authorities have defended it as a deterrent to crime and serious misconduct. Caning was discussed in the parliament after legislators asked how it would be used in relation to bullying in schools. The debate followed stricter guidelines on serious student misconduct, including bullying, unveiled by the Singaporean Ministry of
As evening falls in Fiji’s capital, a steady stream of people approaches a makeshift clinic that is a first line of defense against one of the world’s fastest-growing HIV epidemics. In the South Pacific nation — a popular tourist destination of just under a million people — more than 2,000 new HIV cases were recorded last year, a 26 percent increase from 2024. The government has declared an HIV outbreak and described it as a national crisis. “It’s spreading like wildfire,” said Siteri Dinawai, 46, who came to be tested. The Moonlight Clinic, a converted minibus parked in a suburban cul-de-sac in Suva, is
A MESSAGE: Japan’s participation in the Balikatan drills is a clear deterrence signal to China not to attack Taiwan while the US is busy in the Middle East, an analyst said The Japan Self-Defense Forces yesterday fired a Type 88 anti-ship missile during a joint maritime exercise with US, Australian and Philippine forces, hitting a decommissioned Philippine Navy ship in waters facing the disputed South China Sea, in drills that underscore Tokyo’s rising willingness to project military power on China’s doorstep. The drill took place as Manila and Tokyo began talks on a potential defense equipment transfer, made possible by Japan’s decision to scrap restrictions on military exports. The discussions include the possible early transfer of Abukuma-class destroyers and TC-90 aircraft to the Philippines, Japanese Minister of Defense Shinjiro Koizumi said. Philippine Secretary of
A South Korean judge who last week more than doubled former South Korean first lady Kim Keon-hee’s prison sentence was found dead yesterday, police said. Shin Jong-o was found unconscious at about 1am at the Seoul High Court building, an investigator at the Seocho District Police Station in Seoul said. Shin was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead, he said. “There is no sign of foul play in the death,” the investigator added. Local media reported that Shin had left a suicide note, but the investigator said there was none. On Tuesday last week, Shin presided over 53-year-old Kim’s appeal trial, finding her guilty
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